 What's up everybody, I'm the Mangus, you were awesome and it's been a little bit since I've brought you any updates on Project Stamina. Quite a few members of the team packed up and headed to PAX, so the updates slowed down for just a little while they attended the event. They did, however, hold another playtest just before they left and I was once again lucky enough to participate. There have been several updates, some of them you'll see clearly in the footage, while others are internal improvements and one update in particular pertains to a brand new game mode. We're going to talk through these updates today as many of them, even the visible ones, have some underlying significance that requires elaboration. We'll then discuss a bit of the roadmap and what we can expect for the game in the coming year. By the way, if you want to take a look at some of their PAX adventures, you can check out the Project Stamina Instagram, linked in the video description below. Here's a nice picture of the members that were in attendance, good looking bunch there, much respect to Fancy's beard. I took the liberty of adding some of the Project Stamina heroes to the photo, and judge me, I was a little tipsy when I did that. Now let's talk about the playtest. The first thing you may notice is the kill counter at the top of the screen. That actually isn't a kill counter, but is instead a score counter, an important distinction as it affects the game modes moving forward. Which brings us to the highlight of this video. Project Stamina has revealed not only the name, but some of the mechanics for their newest game mode. Instead of being called Quick Play or Team Deathmatch, it would be called Tribute, and will have its own separate objectives, mechanics, and strategies. The first team to a score of 50, or whatever number they end up deciding on, will win the match with not only kills contributing to the score, but also controlling areas and completing objectives. I really like this play, and not only does it provide a focal point for combat, but it allows everyone to contribute in some way, shape, or form. If you find yourself simply outclassed by your opponents, you can switch to a more objective based style of gameplay. If you or someone on your team is a little less skilled than the rest, they can still get a sense of achievement and participate in the win by holding down the fort. But mainly, it's just nice to have an incentive to fight in certain areas. Tribute will be a nice addition to the game for five players that may not have time to play the main game with an option that is still competitive, fun, and interesting in its own way. This actually isn't the first implementation of the score counter. This is a reintroduction of the mechanic they had before with some significant upgrades. It's been rebuilt in such a way that it will make it easy for projects to have to implement special seasonal and event-based game modes. It's also a building block for a player workshop, but that isn't something we're going to see for a very long time. You'll notice this to be a trend in these updates, building modular and scalable systems that will provide a basis for implementing new features and improvements in the future and getting them done faster. It seems like a fitting strategy for a game that aims to be the spiritual successor to Gigantic. It's kind of like starting with a great base ability, then branching out and upgrading to accommodate the needs of the user. More information on the Tribute game mode will be discussed in the next dev stream in early to mid-April. You can also see an addition of damage numbers on hit. This also applies to healing as well. A small change, yet a welcome one, as it lets you know when you're landing shots. They currently don't plan to implement balance changes, so pay no attention to the actual damage dealt. These play tests are designed to look for bugs, test out new systems, and make sure the servers can handle multiple players online. Balance patches will come in due time when they are deemed necessary. There were also some improvements made to character movement. They manually patched in the root motion task system slated for introduction in the as yet unreleased 4.25 version of the Unreal Engine. Root motion gives them a framework for movement options and negates the need for having to write new code. A good example of this can be found in Matani's right click ability called Ballon. The way it used to work was you could target an ally and jump to their location. Now the ability allows her to track to the targeted character and follow them even if they dash away. A significant improvement that better embodies the supportive nature of this ability. Using root motion will also allow them to introduce new characters faster by having set movement logic already in place. They introduced an interact system that can be used for future aspects of the game, but for now you can see it at work when you channel these orbs situated around the map. These orbs will provide some as yet undetermined team-wide buffs, but for now they will simply give 100% ultimate charge. Currently the only hero with a functional ultimate is Matani. This is another big change from the last play test. Once you or someone on your team channels the orb, Matani can use her ultimate called Down Draft to blast a massive area with wind, cleansing debuffs from allies while dealing damage and knocking enemies back a significant distance. You can sweep in with Balon, blast everyone with Down Draft, then sit back and take a sip of tea from your ducky mug. Another one that you could feel more than see is a rewrite to their connection logic. Again, this was done to make that particular system modular for reuse in future game modes. The connection logic applies to like matchmaking or bringing you back into a game. There are several functions for the connection logic. It's worth noting that much of the gameplay you see here is unrealistic. They sped up health and stamina region as well as lowering the cooldowns on abilities to provide an environment that is better for testing. Things like building a fort out of Kyra mines won't be possible in the actual game. Come into my explosions. Stop. Stop. Stop. You can't get me boy. Kyra is still represented by the Gumbi man placeholder. While I really look forward to having our furious fighting Phenic Fox's appearance and animations added to the game, I kinda wanna see the Gumbi man as a playable hero. Maybe he could be the ultimate random pick, takes on the ability set of a different character each time he spawns. So what does Project Stamina have in store for us in the future? Before they launch their alpha, they want to introduce Geist, Notch, and Cake to the roster. Cake being the community created character. One of the perks of becoming a patron to Project Stamina is that you get to vote on various aspects of Cake, everything from attitude to abilities. The addition of Geist will also come with AI controller since he summons undead warriors to fight for him. The NPC AI functionality will also be applied to summonable map elements. There are several gameplay mechanics that they want to introduce, jump attacks to the back of a character and flicking a slow, selectable omen abilities, ultimates for the rest of the lineup, and the additional orb effects like buffs. They also plan to update the UI and perform great box testing for a second map. On the back end, they're going to update their build processes for better optimization, improve build times, and an updated launcher that includes auto-patching. So as you can see, while the team has come a very long way, they still have several challenges ahead of them. As I've said from the beginning though, prior proper planning is going to carry the day for Project Stamina. By taking time to build modular processes now, they will be able to implement changes at a much faster pace in the future. They're currently laying the track to ensure that our already steaming engine continues to pick up speed. The momentum provided by the groundwork they are laying now will turn this game into an unstoppable juggernaut of fun. Grab yourself a ticket and hop on this train now. It's going to be a wild ride. For more information about Project Stamina, you can refer to the social media links in the video description below, as well as in a pinned comment to make things easier for folks watching on their phones. For now, this is the Mangoo signing off. You guys, have a good one. Mangoo's. If you're looking for some more content about Project Stamina, I suggest checking out Cruf. She just did a video about Project Stamina. It is absolutely amazing and I'm kinda jealous of her video editing skills.